Men Who Were Converted Trying to Disprove the Bible - Part 3 of 3

Above all other books, the Bible has been hated, vilified, ridiculed, criticized, restricted, banned, and destroyed, but it has been to no avail. As one rightly said, “We might as well put our shoulder to the burning wheel of the sun, and try to stop it on its flaming course, as attempt to stop the circulation of the Bible” (Sidney Collett, All about the Bible, p. 63).In A.D. 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian issued an edict to stop Christians from worshipping Jesus Christ and to destroy their Scriptures. Every official in the empire was ordered to raze the churches to the ground and burn every Bible found in their districts (Stanley Greenslade, Cambridge History of the Bible). Twenty-five years later Diocletian’s successor, Constantine, issued another edict ordering fifty Bibles to be published at government expense (Eusebius).

In 1778 the French infidel Voltaire boasted that in 100 years Christianity would cease to exist, but within 50 years the Geneva Bible Society used his press and house to publish Bibles (Geisler and Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, 1986, pp. 123, 124).

Robert Ingersoll once boasted, “Within 15 years I’ll have the Bible lodged in a morgue.” But Ingersoll is dead, and the Bible is alive and well.

In fact, many who set out to disprove the Bible have been converted, instead. The following are a few more examples:

Gary ParkerGary Parker has an Ed.D. in biology/geology from Ball State University. Following is his testimony:

“I wasn’t just teaching evolution, I was preaching it. ‘It was millions of years of struggle and death that brought mankind and all the other animals and plants into being,’ I told my college students. I praised Darwin for being the first to understand how evolution worked. ... I let students freely express their religious beliefs, but would not let them use their personal faith to challenge what I considered the rock-hard science of evolution. I thought it was part of my duty as a science teacher to deliver my students from silly old superstitions, like taking the Bible literally and trying to refute evolution with ‘creation science.’

“The change began when Dr. Charles Signorino, a chemistry professor at the college where I was teaching biology, invited my wife and me to his home for Bible study. ... I started studying the Bible, primarily to criticize it more effectively. ...

“Make no mistake about it--creation/evolution is a salvation issue. I do not mean you have to have a detailed knowledge of creation science to be a Christian; I simply mean that belief in evolution can be for many, as it was for me, a powerful stumbling block to accepting (or even considering) the claims of Christ. Paul warned Timothy to avoid the oppositions of science falsely so-called, which some have erred concerning the faith (1 Tim. 6:20-21). Evolution is really ‘humanism dressed up in a lab coat,’ a man-centered worldview that uses scientific jargon to put man’s opinions far above God’s Word (as Eve did in the Garden).

“My extensive knowledge of, and zeal for, evolution certainly prevented me from even considering that God might be real and the Bible true. So what happened? Well, Dr. Signorino, the colleague who invited me to the Bible study, was not only a superb Bible teacher, he was also a scientist respected internationally for his work in chemistry. He challenged me to look again at the science I thought I knew so well. Confident that science would support evolution and refute biblical literalism, I gladly accepted the challenge.

“The battle began. For three years, we argued creation/evolution. For three years, I used all the evolutionary arguments I knew so well. For three years, I lost every scientific argument. In dismay, I watched the myth of evolution evaporate under the light of scientific scrutiny, while the scientific case for Creation-Corruption-Catastrophe-Christ just got better and better. It’s no wonder that the ACLU (actually the anti-Christian lawyers union) fights by any means to censor any scientific challenge to evolution! ...

“About that time, I got a copy in the mail of the first book I ever wrote, a programmed science instruction book called DNA: The Key to Life. Up until that time I thought people who wrote books, especially textbooks in science, knew what they were talking about. I had a nearly straight A average and earned numerous academic awards, and my book had been reviewed by experts on DNA, but I knew all the uncertainties that went into it. (Indeed, when I published the second edition five years later, I put the first edition aside and started fresh; so much additional knowledge about DNA had been gained.) It finally dawned on me: if experts in science can write books that have to be continually corrected, revised, and updated, perhaps God could write a Book in which He said what He meant and meant what He said: eternal and unchanging truth, an absolutely sure foundation for understanding life useful to all people at all times in all places!

“Looking now at the Bible as the truly true ‘History Book of the Universe,’ I was lifted out of the prison of time, space, and culture, and enabled to see past the shallow and ever-changing words of human experts to the deep and never-changing Word of the Lord God, Maker of heaven and earth! I experienced who Jesus is and what Jesus meant when He said, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’ (John 8:32). ...

“I could now look at familiar facts in unfamiliar ways--ways that made more sense scientifically and helped me to solve some of the origins problems that had puzzled me as an evolutionist. As I looked at biology with the blinders of evolution finally removed, the biblical theme of Creation-Corruption-Catastrophe-Christ was reflected everywhere! ...

“... some said that if I only knew more about fossils, I would give up this ‘creationist nonsense’ and accept the ‘fact of evolution.’ Then the Lord did something fabulous for me: a fellowship from the National Science Foundation for 15 months of full-time doctoral study. With fear and trembling, I added a doctoral minor in geology, emphasizing paleontology and origins, to check out the fossil evidence firsthand. I had excellent professors, including some Christians, but all assumed evolution without question. However, what they taught me about fossils made it hard to believe in evolution and easy to accept the biblical record of a perfect creation, ruined by man, destroyed by the Flood, restored to new life in Christ. ...

“At the end of my geophysics unit on radiometric dating, the professor was going over the long list of assumptions that are required to convert any measurement of radioisotope amounts into some estimate of age. Midway through the list of unwarranted assumptions and inconsistent results, the professor paused to joke that if a Bible-believing Christian ever became aware of these problems, he would make havoc out of the radiometric dating system! Then he admonished us to ‘keep the faith.’ “Keep the faith. At bottom, that is all there is to radioactive decay dating: a faith the facts have failed. At bottom, that’s all there is to evolution: a faith the facts have failed. Evolution was only able to get a toe-hold on science because of 19th-century ignorance of molecular biology, cellular ultra structure, ecology, and systematics. Discoveries in these fields completely crushed evolution as a science, but it persists only too well as a secular religion protected from contrary evidence by the anti-American censorship lawyers united” (Persuaded by the Evidence, pp. 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 258, 260, 261).Lee StrobelLee Strobel has a law degree from Yale University and worked as an investigative reporter for one of America’s largest newspapers, the Chicago Tribune. He was an atheist. After his wife became a Christian in 1979, he was upset at her decision and determined to prove that the Bible is not true and that Jesus Christ is not the Son God. For two years he pursued this objective, using all of his legal and journalistic skills, but in the end he had proved to himself that the Bible is the Word of God and Jesus rose from the dead. He became a Christian in 1981 and has since written many books defending the Christian faith.

“It wasn’t a phone call from an informant that prompted me to reexamine the case for Christ. It was my wife. Leslie stunned me in the autumn of 1979 by announcing that she had become a Christian. I rolled my eyes and braced for the worst, feeling like the victim of a bait-and-switch scam. I had married one Leslie--the fun Leslie, the carefree Leslie, the risk-taking Leslie--and now I feared she was going to turn into some sort of sexually repressed prude who would trade our upwardly mobile lifestyle for all-night prayer vigils and volunteer work in grimy soup kitchens.

“Instead I was pleasantly surprised--even fascinated--by the fundamental changes in her character, her integrity, and her personal confidence. Eventually I wanted to get to the bottom of what was prompting these subtle but significant shifts in my wife’s attitudes, so I launched an all-out investigation into the facts surrounding the case for Christianity.

“Setting aside my self-interest and prejudices as best I could, I read books, interviewed experts, asked questions, analyzed history, explored archaeology, studied ancient literature, and for the first time in my life picked apart the Bible verse by verse.

“I plunged into the case with more vigor than with any story I had ever pursued. I applied the training I had received at Yale Law School as well as my experience as legal affairs editor of the Chicago Tribune. And over time the evidence of the world--of history, of science, of philosophy, of psychology--began to point toward the unthinkable” (Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, 1998, p. 14).Strobel became convinced that the Bible is true and that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He has written many books defending the Christian faith, including The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus and The Case for the Resurrection.

(Sadly, we cannot recommend Strobel’s ministry. He is New Evangelical at best, was long associated with Bill Hybels and Willowcreek Community Church, and has spoken for the self-esteem heretic Robert Schuller.)

Jobe MartinDr. Jobe Martin is a dentist. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh Dental School in 1966. While in the military, he served on Air Force One, the presidential jet. He worked for NASA in Houston, Texas, and held a teaching position at Baylor College of Dentistry.

A Darwinian evolutionist until he put his faith in Jesus Christ in 1976, he is the author of “Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution” and “The Evolution of a Creationist.”

The following is his testimony:

“In the fall of 1971 I went to Baylor University in Dallas and gave my first lecture. It was on the evolution of the tooth. I talked about how these fish scales gradually migrated into the mouth and became teeth. A couple of students came to me after the class that day and said, ‘Dr. Martin, have you ever investigated the claims of creation science?’ I had never even heard of it. So I said, ‘Sure, I’ll look into this with you.’ And I’m thinking, kind of as a cocky young professor, ‘I’ll blow these guys away.’ “Well, they asked me to study the assumptions that the evolutionists make. In all of my eight years of scientific education, I had never had a single professor tell me about an assumption. So we started looking at the assumptions. I began to realize that evolutionists are making some claims that are based on assumptions that aren’t valid, when they tell us that rocks are so old and these kinds of things.

“Then they asked me to start studying some animals and see if I thought they could have evolved. The first thing that we studied together was this little bug called the bombardier beetle. This little insect, which is about a half inch long, mixes chemicals that explode. I began to think, O.K. how would that evolve? If evolution is true it had to somehow evolve that. Let’s assume it is evolving this defense mechanism, but the first time that it finally produces the explosion, what happens to the bug? Well, it is destroyed by the explosion, and we know that splattered bug pieces don’t evolve. So I thought, how could this have happened? Well, [because of the intricate way it is built] it doesn’t blow itself up. It has another little factory inside itself and it manufactures a chemical that acts as a catalyst, so when it squirts that chemical into these other chemicals that are in a suspended state it produces the explosion. And it has an asbestos-lined firing chamber to protect itself. And it has two little twin tail tubes, and it can aim these tubes out the side, even out the front. Let’s say a spider is coming up toward its side and it doesn’t have time to turn around and shoot. It can just take its little gun turret, aim it out to the side, and shoot. If you are listening to the explosion all you hear is a single pop, but scientists have put that sound into slow motion, and it is like about a thousand sequential little explosions that are so fast that all we hear is one pop. So you think, why would that be? It was a curious thing for the scientists that are studying this little bug. A lot of them are at Cornell University and some other places. What they discovered was that if it were just one big explosion, the little bug would be jetted away by the force! But as long as it is a sequential explosion, the bug with his little legs can hang on. How would evolution explain a sequential explosion?

“This little bug messes with all of the theories of evolution. There is no way a slow, gradual process is going to produce this bug. There is no way, even, that the newer theories, such as punctuated equilibrium, can explain this bug. I began to realize that this little bug needed to have all of its parts there at once or you just don’t have the animal.

“And my stomach started to churn. My wife will tell you that my stomach churned for five years. It took a five-year struggle for me to begin to flip the way I think, from thinking in an evolutionary way to thinking that this creature was created fully formed just like it is. That went against everything I had ever learned” (Jobe Martin, Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution 1, ExplorationFilms.com).